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Right Wing Terrorism: Clear And Present Danger

Silence and equivocating from so-called progressives is disgraceful. Why canâ€™t ideological all-or-nothing progressives find the vigor to denounce racism? Do they view racism as intellectual and abstract phenomena?

[Speaking Truth To Empower]

President Obama’s milestone victory in passing healthcare reform has unleashed a national orgy of bigotry and violence—underscored by the recent arrest of members of a Michigan militia.

Nine Members of the Hutaree Militia, a so-called “Christian” group, were rounded-up from March 28-30 by federal authorities. A Detroit federal grand jury has indicted them on five counts of: (1) Seditious Conspiracy (2) Attempting To Use Weapons Of Mass Destruction (3) Teaching/Demonstrating Use Of Explosive Materials, and (4) two counts of Carrying, Using And Possessing a Firearm During And In Relation To A Crime Of Violence.

The Defendants David Stone, David Stone Jr., Joshua Stone, Tina Stone, Joshua Clough, Michael Meeks, Thomas Piatek, Kristopher Sickles and Jacob Ward, apparently, hatched a plot to kill and ambush law enforcement officers. Their objective was to ignite war between militias and the federal government. This latest development, given the recent wave of vandalism against offices of Democratic lawmakers who voted for healthcare reform, is ominous.

Coincidentally, this news overshadowed the guilty plea of 21-year-old Tennessean Daniel Cowart, who admitted he and Paul Schlesselman, of Arkansas, plotted to assassinate 102 African-Americans, including then candidate Barack Obama.

Since the passage of healthcare reform, attacks and death threats have percolated throughout the country including in Kansas, Arizona, Virginia and New York, against Democratic lawmakers. There’s strong evidence this wave of violence is indicative of incubating intolerance brewing within the Right-Wing Militia and Tea Party Movements.

In Virginia, Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother had his house’s gas line cut. Apparently, an organizer of the Lynchburg Tea Party, Mike Troxel, posted Rep. Perriello’s brother’s address on the Tea Party website urging readers to “drop by” thinking it was the lawmaker's own address.

Some of the attacks involved bricks being thrown through windows, mirroring actions urged by an Alabama militia man.

Mike Vanderboegh, 57, of Birmingham, wrote on his blog: “To all modern Sons of Liberty: This is you time. Break their windows. Break them now. Break them and run to break again. Break them under the cover of night. Break them in broad daylight---Break them with rocks. Break them with slingshots. Break them with baseball bats. But BREAK THEM.”

On March 19, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY,) had a brick thrown through her Niagara Falls’ office window with a note quoting the later Conservative, Barry Goldwater: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”

Rep. Slaughter told of a threatening message left on her office voicemail, where the caller said “assassinate…toward the children of lawmakers who voted yes," for healthcare reform.

Mark Stupak, (D-MI,) who pushed for an abortion funding ban in the health care bill, said he received angry messages including one man who said "Congressman Stupak, you baby-killing mother fucker... I hope you bleed out your ass, get cancer and die, you mother fucker."

Civil Rights icon John Lewis (D-GA) was called the N-word.

Rep. Louise Slaughter warned: “If we’re going back 40 years—and I hope to heaven we are not—in the way we treat each other, we have got to stamp that out right now.”

These events highlight an emerging “Clear and Present Danger” emanating from right-wingers. The whipping up of xenophobic sentiments, amid America’s current backdrop of economic insecurity, is creating a fearful atmosphere of deadly prejudice and paranoia. The Klan lynch mob mentality is resurrecting.

The so-called “Christian” Hutaree Militia members indoctrinated their followers into believing the “Anti-Christ” and “Armageddon” is here. For backward and illiterate Whites, this means a Black family lives in the White House.

Right-wing rage, allegedly, targeting “big government” policies is a cover for rabid racism. Can there be bigger proponents of “big government” than those condoning, promoting and spending trillions to globalize war, while sending American soldiers to function as “baby killers” abroad?

Where were these paragons of fiscal responsibility when George W. Bush’s White House was pillaging America’s treasury and turning the Bill Clinton surplus into a multi-trillion dollar deficit?

“Big government” in fact, are those who claim alleged moral puritanism to push for banning abortion, thereby expanding legislate --i.e. big government-- control over people’s bodies.

For these perverted alleged patriots, government, in their view, should not do anything that improves the lives of Blacks or Latinos.

Some people contend the rage of these right-wing racists isn’t “misplaced,” but is merely an outgrowth of the economic depression. This is a curious argument given that Black folk, victims of centuries of abuse and discrimination --and enduring a permanent "recession"-- are always urged by the establishment to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Silence and equivocating on this serious issue—especially from so-called progressives—is disgraceful. Why can’t these rigidly ideological all-or-nothing progressives, who criticize President Obama for not bringing Utopian change, find the same vigor in their voices to denounce racism? Might it be that they only view racism as an intellectual and abstract phenomena?

Why won’t these major corporate media giants refer to these maniacs as the terrorists that they are?

On April 16, the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, when Timothy McVeigh took part in the murder of 168 people, there will a “Second Amendment March,” on Washington D.C., by those claiming, falsely, that President Obama is trying to take their guns away.

Some of these kooks need their guns taken away; otherwise sane level-headed folks need to be armed to defend themselves against these terrorists.